Five Key Alerts for Goodwill Retail Management

We’ve worked with numerous Goodwill agencies and helped management glean important data on their operations with our business intelligence (BI) platform. With the Goodwill retail stores, we’ve found five key areas that are important for management to stay updated on. With BI, Managers can view that information real time with dynamic dashboards and set up automatic email alerts to provide notifications on these areas.

Return counts – Management likes to keep a close eye on returns. If a Manager determines the average number of returns per store and/or per cashier, a threshold can be established for an alert. So, for example, if a cashier goes over that predetermined amount of returns, a BI alert is sent.

Aborted transactions – As many Store Managers know, sometimes when a transaction gets started and then canceled, it could be be an indication of a problem with the cashier. With BI alerts, management can be notified if aborted transaction instances increase beyond the average.

Over/short by cashier – Store Managers also keep close tabs on discrepancies in cash. Most organizations have policies in place regarding how much cashiers are allowed to be over or short and how often. For example, if a cashier exceeds the designated number of over/shorts during a set period, this leads to a termination. However, District Managers often don’t have this information as readily available. If an alert is set up to notify District Managers of over/short instances, they can insure that Store Managers are following through with policy.

Stores performing below budget – District Managers typically receive updates on store sales via reports on a monthly or quarterly basis. With BI and alerts, District Management has access to real-time information on store performance and can respond quickly to help low-performing stores get back on track.

Stores exceeding goals – Alerts don’t always have to be negative. If a store exceeds their sales target, the District Manager can be notified by an alert, so they can congratulate the Store Manager and employees.

These are just some examples of the types of alerts that retail management could benefit from. All kinds of notifications can be set up, from diminishing inventory quantities to top selling categories. With BI, this information is available to Managers at their fingertips and saves them the time of running reports and digging for information – allowing them to return their focus to achieving the agency’s Mission.